Blog

It's something we all need, to know and be known. It’s not just knowing about someone but it’s knowing that person in an experiential way - to be close and personal. It’s to be loved, understood and accepted. It’s being mutually vulnerable and transparent. It’s often something we fear but when we have it, it brings great security and confidence.

Our daughter was recently married in Nashville, Tennessee and I had the great joy of marrying she and her husband. My wife and I and our family, our extended family and all our friends shared in the moment when Erin and Michael read their vows to one another and became husband wife. The vows they committed to each other that day were full of the passion they felt for each other. They spoke of what they already knew about each other and their desire to know and be known by the other person. They were speaking about their hopes of sharing a lifetime of experiencing intimacy together.

Like Erin and Michael, in those first blissful moments of marriage, we need intimacy in our human relationships. But ultimately our lives are incomplete without intimacy with God; without knowing and being known intimately by our Creator.

Intimacy with God brings freedom and strength. It brings us great comfort when we are hurting and feel alone.

I believe Intimacy with God is at the very heart of what we need to function and live healthy lives.

We understand intimacy with God as experiencing forgiveness and are made right or righteous by Him. That is only possible as we trust in His love and provision for our sin through the person and work of Christ.

Col 2:13,14 "He (Jesus) has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness if sins."

2 Cor. 5:21 "God made Him (Jesus) who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness if God."

Through both the Person and work of Jesus our sin has been dealt with so that now we can be in a right and intimate relationship with God. This intimate relationship with Himself is a gift He offers us because He loves us and wants us to know Him and be close to Him. This intimacy is the foundation of all I am and have and in turn frees me to be intimate with others.